WARREN, Ohio ― Bresha Meadows, or “Breezy” as her friends called her, used to spend a lot of time in her bedroom.

Sometimes she exercised with her best friend Saquoya, doing squats
and situps, the thumps of their jumping bodies reverberating throughout
the house. Bresha and Saquoya liked to dance too, livestreaming their
impromptu performances on Facebook.

Sometimes
they just talked. They met freshman year of high school and instantly
bonded. Bresha liked to confide in Saquoya. She told her about her
depression, which had settled in like a dark fog.

Most
nights, though, Bresha was alone, burying herself in a book with her
door firmly closed. Her room, on the second floor, was a controlled
environment. Downstairs was not.

Downstairs,
there were holes in the closet door in the shape of her mother’s head.
Downstairs was her father, a man whom members of her family described as
a domestic tyrant ― domineering, violent and cruel.

“She used to hide up there,” Bresha’s mother, Brandi Meadows, 41, said in early January while sitting in her living room. “She did not want to be around him.”

As she tells it, Jonathan
Meadows, 41, was an abusive husband. For the better part of two decades,
she said, he beat and controlled her. Bresha and her two older siblings, Brianna and Jonathan Jr., bore witness to the violence.

“I know all the kids felt it, seen it, heard it,” she said. “It was horrible in this house.”

These
days, the house is grimly quiet, bereft of screams and fighting, a
tinderbox defused. Two of its residents are abruptly gone, leaving the
rest of the family in a state of shock and mourning.

Precisely what took place inside Bresha’s home is still being uncovered.

In the early morning hours of July 28, 2016, Jonathan was shot in the head
while he was sleeping on the couch. Police arrested Bresha, then 14,
and transported her to a juvenile detention center in Warren, Ohio.

She has not been home since.
Now six months after the fatal incident, she remains in custody
awaiting trial on a charge of aggravated murder.

Her incarceration has
attracted national attention to the plight of women and children,
particularly those who are black, who are trapped behind bars for what
they say are acts of sheer survival.

Anti-domestic violence and criminal justice reform advocates, organizing under the #FreeBresha campaign, have demanded that prosecutors drop the charges and release the teen immediately.

They claim that she is being
punished just when she needs support and healing. In jail, there’s no
mental health therapy to address her trauma. There are no family members
or friends to help her recover.

No one disputes that Bresha shot Jonathan. The question is why.

Jonathan’s family members
deny that he was abusive. Lena Cooper, his sister, said she thinks
domestic violence claims are being fabricated to help Bresha’s defense.

“I still love my niece,” she told The Huffington Post by phone, but “it is not normal for a child to kill her father.”

But Bresha’s family members
say the teen made an impossible calculation. She traded her figurative
prison for a literal one so the rest of them could finally break free.
Now, they are fighting to bring her home.

Bresha Meadows, a juvenile accused of killing her father, is pictured at a court hearing in Warren, Ohio, on Jan. 20, 2017. (The Huffington Post)

When Home Is A War Zone

Every
year, millions of children across America witness acts of domestic
violence and suffer deep psychological trauma as a result. Children
understand implicitly that they are expected to keep their family’s
secrets. But growing up in a violent household can literally make a
child sick.

The trauma can affect kids’ developing brains,
leading to “long-term consequences for learning, behavior, and both
physical and mental health,” according to the Center on the Developing
Child at Harvard University. These same children, when they grow up, are
more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, commit suicide and continue the generational cycle of abuse.

But it is extremely rare for them to kill a parent.

Kathleen Heide, a professor at the University of South Florida who studies parricide,
estimates there are only about 50 children under 18 who kill their
parents each year in the U.S. Most of them are victims of severe child
abuse and neglect, she said, and act out of pure desperation.

“These are kids who’ve
endured years of abuse,” she said. “They’ve tried to get away. They may
have attempted or thought about suicide, and they’ve enlisted the help
of others, often to no avail.”

Bresha
fits Heide’s profile to an unnerving degree, according to statements
from her friends and family. She ran away from home more than once, the
last time just two months before the shooting. She started cutting
herself, a form of self-harm common among girls suffering from emotional
distress. She told an aunt that she would rather kill herself than go
back to living with her dad. Saquoya, her best friend, said Bresha felt
trapped and alone.

Bresha
shot Jonathan while he was asleep. That’s common, Heide said,
explaining that children, usually smaller and weaker than adults, may
believe it’s the only time they can fight back without risking their own
lives. (Battered women who kill their abusers follow a similar
pattern.)

But
the law does not generally recognize such killings as self-defense,
Heide said. In most cases, a person can only use deadly force in
self-defense if they believe they are being threatened with imminent
death or serious bodily harm. When children kill in nonconfrontational
situations, she said, they are typically charged with murder or
manslaughter, transferred to an adult court where they face stiff
penalties, and spend decades behind bars.

“Even when the situation is marked by severe abuse, they rarely walk,” Heide said.

That was the future Bresha faced when she was first charged with murder in July.
In Ohio, a child who is 14 or older who commits a felony can be tried
as an adult in criminal court, and, in cases like Bresha’s, can face a
life sentence if convicted.

That
terrifying prospect weighed heavily on Bresha for months, her family
said. She was put on suicide watch inside the Warren juvenile detention
center more than once.

Then, in December, her lawyer, Ian Friedman, announced that her case would remain in juvenile court, a significant victory for the defense. Now, if Bresha is convicted, she can only remain behind bars until age 21.